ServiceStack and JSV: When I serialize a Dictionary<string, object> the type of 'object' is lost on deserialization

Question

In a POCO object, that I persiste using OrmLite, I have the following property:

....
public Dictionary<string, object> CustomData { get; set; }
...

This property is filled with data, like:

customData.Add("_GooglePassword", "blabla"); // this is a String
customData.Add("_ServerPort", 8093); // this is an Int32
// etc...

It is saved in the database as JSV, like this:

{_GooglePassword:blabla,_ServerPort:8093}

The problem comes when I deserialize this, back to the Dictionary in C#, then it puts everything back as strings, as this exception in VS shows:

So, instead of getting it back to an Int32 as it is defined in the class, I get strings, which will give be problems. Im pretty sure that using normal JSON and the DataContract-approach would not have this issue, as I use JSON in other parts.

Am I missing something here?

Thanks =)

Answer 1

Some interesting viewpoints of why inheritance in DTOs is a bad idea from ss author and here.

If your settings can be splitted in profiles, I would suggest you to split in interfaces /classes each cluster of properties and store them in separated strongly-typed properties.

Depending on your context, if you are just storing information and you are not processing or applying business rules to those settings you might receive the dynamic json in a property and storing it as a string. This way you don't create a Settings class just for storing purpose.